So........ the neighbor lady called me today: $3.18 for oil

For fear of more & more folks switching to heating with wood, making the demand for things including wood higher. I don't talk about it with anyone but my family and here.
Once everyone jumps aboard anything, it goes to hell.

What Hog said. Plus, who is she gonna turn to for help with wood and everything stove related? you have the time for that?

She ain't gloating

Crank the stove up so it's tropical, and call her over for cookies and a chat.
Make sure to answer the door wearing flip flops and shorts.

Glad ta see ya having fun, and enjoying all your hard work Shari

My next door neighbor has been living there for 12 years. I moved in 3 years ago. He never had anything but, the oil furnace. Last winter he came into my basement to help me unload the new stove into the walk out garage. He went into the area where the old stove was and I apologized saying, "sorry Bill it's hot as hell in here." We were covered in snow and freezing from the blizzard that was coming down out there. We just took a few minutes to warm up and I showed him the old stove, which was hard at work at the time. This fall, I helped him install a pellet stove in his living room

I bet if you have your neighbor over for a cup of coffee during a cold day, she'll go back home and wish she felt like that at her 62 degree house. There's one down side to this. She may not want to leave!! ;-P

I don't think we'll see a mass exitus to wood. It's not as convinent as most of us have gotten used to. Most people just want to flip a switch.

I keep wanting to tell people that pine is fine to burn, but realize that maybe my supply will suddenly decrease.....

Shari said:

So, the neighbor lady called me today - furious that she had to pay $3.18 per gallon for fuel oil.

Click to expand...

Tell her to move to PA. I just rounded up some quotes and not one of them was below 3.30 a gallon.

Sounds like a deal to me. I would let the stove idle a little lower for that price and give the wood pile a rest.

Only $3.18! Man, here we are in Alaska, where all the oil is, and we are paying $3.51. Drives me crazy. Cant wait for the BLAZE KING to be installed on Monday!

RedGuy said:

I don't think we'll see a mass exitus to wood. It's not as convinent as most of us have gotten used to. Most people just want to flip a switch.

Click to expand...

+1
or they get a wood stove, figure out there is some work involved. Stove becomes a flat surface to pile stuff on.
(Like our treadmill )

What do the folks without back heat do, when the power is out for weeks? Always wondered. (portable electric heaters?)
This winter may produce some converts.

$3.16 a gal here.

$3.22 in central NY. Heating oil closed up a few cents on the market yesterday. We'll see what Monday brings.

About the same up here, $3.20. But I never get deliveries in winter anyway, I watch the prices at the end of summer and fill up then - we usually use 1/2 tank, never a whole one - this years fill up was $2.64 gal.

Shari said:

So, the neighbor lady called me today - furious that she had to pay $3.18 per gallon for fuel oil. She knows we are heating with wood and laughingly asked if we were 'warm'. I said, "But of course! Want to come on down and get warm?" I know she only heats her home to around 62 degrees.

Now she is talking about getting a conversion kit to convert her oil furnace into a gas f/a furnace.

She's got a big, beautiful lannon stone fireplace that just sits there that has had about 6 fires in it since the home was built in the 1950's - what a shame!

I think I'll invite her down here - just to warm up......... maybe, just maybe heating with wood will come up in our conversation.

Click to expand...

My brother keeps his house set at 65 degrees with natural gas furanance. He walks around with a sweater on most of the time. He will give me a call from time to time and ask what our houses temperature is and with a dissapointment I like to tell him the room temperature has plunged down to 75 degrees from 80........

Bill

Hogwildz said:

For fear of more & more folks switching to heating with wood, making the demand for things including wood higher. I don't talk about it with anyone but my family and here.
Once everyone jumps aboard anything, it goes to hell.

Click to expand...

I recall back in the 70's thinking the same thoughts. We lived in an area where lots of folks already had wood heat but there were so many buying wood stoves and I wondered what the wood supply might be like in a few years. For sure the first year or two the fence rows and ditches would be cleaned out but what then? Well, what then turned out to be the wood stoves being put out in barns and sheds for many folks.

Around here we could really stand a huge increase in wood burning just to clean up all the dead and dieing trees. But, it won't happen simply because it is so much work. So people start buying wood and we all know that is a losing proposition. Hard to light fires, creosote, etc., etc. It ends up being a pain for most folks and in the end they aren't saving any dollars so they keep on buying gas and oil.

So, I worry not about the future supply of wood or wood burning related things.

Aw hell, I'm not worried about everyone jumping on the bad wagon - it takes a little effort to heat with wood, and most ppl want instant gratification these days. Hell, most twenty-somethings think heat comes from the thermomstat!

I often think, what waste of fuel goes on in our country and all over the world. In the winter of 2008 the ice storm left some in Mass out of power for as long as three weeks. The trees and limbs that littered the streets were too much to handle. Each town picked a place to temporarily store the wood cleaned from the streets just so cars could go by. The second step was to collect limbs that were broken but still up, further endangering power lines and streets. The result was a huge amount of free wood that was piled at the local soccer fields parking lot in town. The pile was too big for me to measure or describe with words. But, the town still had a lot more to go. They voted on weather or not to have fema funds cover costs of picking up the rest of the debris left in people's yards. The debris would certainly become a fire hazzard if dumped in nearby wooded areas or vacant lots. At first the town decided to turn down fema funds and charge the residents in the form of incresed property taxes. That decision was repealed, when the vote was brought up again. The storm was in December, the clean up did not take place untill July of 2009. I was left with over one cord of wood from fallen trees and limbs. I could only imagine how much wood was wasted in this clean up. People in town would have been able to heat for years to come if the wood had been free for the taking and people were willing to go through the work.

At the time, I did not heat with wood. Later that winter I bought an old Surdiac on Craigslist and installed it in the basement. That stove was also aided by an old camp stove that went into the fireplace upstairs. I vowed never to be driven out of my house due to power failures. During the six days we were left without power, we went to my inlaws house who have been heating with wood since the 90's. I had to return home daily to light fires in the fireplace to keep the pipes from freezing. I spent the coldest night that week sleeping on the sofa and keeping the fireplace burning all night. I was warm and really fell in love with the fire. We collected water from the stream to flush toilets and cooked on a little gas camp stove in the breezeway with the windows open or outside on the grill. We now have wood stoves, plenty of wood and a generator. So if it happens again we will not be left homeless. As long as gas is available, we'll have power for some lights, the well pump, and a refrigerator. If not the stream out back will serve as a supply for toilet water and the top will come off the shallow for drinking water!! Candles will have to light up the house at night. Which is good because my wife is a Yankee Candle Fanatic!! :lol: